She Walks in Beauty – Lord Byron
Byron’s words are hauntingly beautiful. Simple imagery of a woman’s charm and elegance.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
I carry your heart with me – E. E. Cummings
Traditional romance, experimental. Repetitive nature gives it an incantatory quality.
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart); I’m never without it (anywhere I go, you go my dear and whatever is done by only me, is your doing my darling).
I loved you first, but afterwards your love – Christina Rossetti
Love knows not mine or thine. Explores symbiotic relationship of love with charm.
I loved you first, but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong,
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
Sonnet 116 – Shakespeare
A quintessential definition of true love, doesn’t change or fade. It’s purity has no flaws.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
The Good-Morrow – John Donne
Sensual and spiritual love together. Beautiful.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired and got was but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally
If our two loves be one or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.